*June 2025*
The number of lung cancer cases in people who have never smoked is increasing. The disease is different from lung cancer caused by smoking, so what causes it?
Martha first realised that something was wrong when her cough changed and the mucus in her airways became increasingly viscous. Her doctors put it down to a rare disorder she had that caused her lungs to become chronically inflamed. “No worry, it must be that,” she was told.
When she finally had an X-ray, a shadow was detected on her lung. “That set the ball rolling,” Martha recalls. “First, a CT scan was done, then a bronchoscopy [a procedure that involves using a long tube to inspect the airways in a person’s lungs] to take tissue samples.” After the tumour was removed, about four months after she’d first reported symptoms to her GP, she received the diagnosis: Stage IIIA lung cancer. The tumour had infiltrated the surrounding lymph nodes but had not yet spread to distant organs. Martha was 59 years old.
“It was a total shock,” says Martha. Although she would occasionally light up a cigarette at a party, she never considered herself a smoker. Read more.
